Return with an Exit: “Exit Throught the Porcelain God” at Vintana Gallery

Perhaps it’s not the conventional way of signaling one’s return, but after a year-long hiatus, gallery owner and art director Angela Gaddi writes about a time lost to slumber over her ex-boyfriend; and on the other side of slumber, a way out. Vintana Gallery returns with an exit: Exit Through the Porcelain God. In an intimate space at Sinauna, a bar-turned-gallery in Quezon City, artists and art enthusiasts alike find company in an unlikely place as Gaddi shares her story. We may not have experienced all the details of her story, but this exhibit is a testament to what a much needed catharsis after such a time can do. Life can hand us things that are not so easy to swallow, and it did not force its way down our throats as if we did not consent to it. But all the same, it does not come out without effort, if you will pardon the expression.

The porcelain god may not be the place where one presents himself at his best, and yet, the porcelain god represents a very honest place of being able to admit where one is coming from. And why should one hide from it if in the end, the messy work of purging lets us start over clean again? A bottle of beer in hand, we laugh over our former selves, “What, you too?” Halestorm’s song “What Sober Couldn’t Say”, could never have rang more true.

“Exit Through the Porcelain God” talks about how “we are often backed by survival instincts to overcome the absurdity of things by giving it order, form, and beauty. In art, music, film, and literature, it’s considered almost a crime not to do so”, Gaddi writes in the exhibition text. Art, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, may not always make sense, something abstract and indirect in the face of a real situation. But we turn to art to make life make sense anyhow. If simply for the need to have something to show for the fact that we survived the worst, the exhibit did so and much more, because this exhibit is just the start of what is to come for Vintana.

The group show features backroom works by Filipino contemporary artists Romeo Lee, Argie Bandoy, Paul Mondok, Jan Sunday, Bong Segovia, Lourd De Veyra, Dave Lock, Masi Oliveria, Iggy Rodriguez, Kiko Escora, Jed Escueta, John Marin, and Don Djerassi Dalmacio with additional works by Mitch Garcia, Chalk Zaldivar, Israel Remo, Gani Simpliciano, and Jet Tecson. The show runs until October 26, 2024 at Sinauna Matahimik Street, Diliman, Quezon City.